After masking the figure, front wheel of the bike and the pedal pieces, place in general positions on canvas.

Used puppet warp to align leg, foot and pedal

Chose segment of joint for rope.

Warp the piece into shape. Duplicate a thousand times (ok, it only felt like a thousand times) to create the full rope.

Apply a little warp to create the bend in the rope.

Created the bike seat using the same segment of joint, warped to shape. Levels changed to create natural shadow and light. Hue/Saturation adjustment layer to change the color, with blending mode set to Color.

Umbrella created from section of head. Warped and stretched to create the right shape.

To simulate closed hand around the handle, selected a half-shape piece of top of hand and moved it into place.

Select leg section to create handle. Narrowed and stretched tall.

To create the crowd, isolated arm sections and torso, then mixed and matched to create various expressions.

Crowd "template." These segments were duplicated to make three tiers, spacing adjustments made between figures. Center tier was flipped horizontally to vary the crowd. Second tier and top tier were each made smaller than the previous layer. Gaussian blue applied at 1.5 on fist layer, 2.5 on second layer, and 3.5 for top or back layer.

Foreground crowd was made from the crowd "template" with a second torso applied to cover the arm fronts (to simulate the figures' backs). Levels adjusted to darken.

"Spotlights" added by using soft brush at low opacity. With starting point off the canvas, held Shift key to draw straight lines.

Floor was created with two ellipses of varying shades. Dark red Stroke applied to top oval to create upper edge of circus "ring." Inner shadow applied to lower oval

Duplicate and reduce the rope to create strings of lights.

Using the ellipse tool with shift key pressed, created round lights

On a separate layer, painted white glow on each bulb with a soft brush with low opacity. Because I feared not enough glow, or too much, I repeated the process on another layer with brush set to different opacity. One layer was set to screen, the other normal, but opacity lowered.

Gaussian blue was applied to the background strands. For the foreground lights, layers were duplicated and stretched.

Smallest layer of crowd was highlighted (Control, click on layer) and dark Levels adjustment layer created. Levels layer only was moved to the very back to create the illusion of a fourth row.

To finish, several more layers were inserted in front of and behind the main figure, and painted with splashes of soft colors to create lights and shadows. The same technique used in creating the last row (dark Level adjustment layer) was used to create the shadows on the "ring" wall and floor: crowd template was flipped vertically (upside down), selected, and then shadows painted from the silhouette. Crowd layer was then discarded and Levels layer duplicated, rearranged and overlapped, and opacity turned down.

Slight bevel and emboss added to the foreground light bulbs (Thanks, Alan 2641!)